Martha Colmenares

“First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me”.

This lament by Pastor Martin Niemöller was made in times of Nazi Germany and has such powerful depth that it continues to reberverate, even in our times, as much more than a favorable quotation for jews, that would be just circumstantial. What he said implies that we have to care about each other because when people we are not identified with is humiliated and we don’t do anything because we don’t care, in the end, we will be humiliating ourselves. How many tragedies has indifference caused?! Indiference, which is the same as saying aberrant complicity. Or silence!, a frightful culprit! Many Eastern Europeans who didn’t care about Stalin’s assassinations in the USSR eventually were murdered by him once the USSR occupied their countries, just like those, who didn’t care what was happening to the Jews under Hitler because that was their problem very soon had to pay a dearly high price in Blood.

Those who don’t care what is happening to others end up suffering the same things. This is the essence of Niemöller’s words. In the world, many are suffering things that are not even dennounced because the rest don’t care.

There is a fabulous popular legend about King Christian X of Denmark during the Nazi occupation that he chose, in solidarity with his subject Jews, to carry the yellow Star of David; if true, that would have meant that King Christian understood that in the end we are all “Jews”. But it is not about Jews that this article is about, but about understanding that whatever injustices that happen to others and we allow to continue, may end up happening to ourselves.

Today, Muslims are suspected of terrorism all around the world just because they are Muslims. Will the Catholics come next? Or will it be the Communists? Will it be the trade unionists? Will it be religious people in general? Will it be people with different points of view?

In Venezuela all of us who are not fully committed to Chavez revolution will become political prisoners.

His reflection is a hint put in many texts and consciences and in these texts the hopelessness converges. Heart ripping events for posterity that reiterate that this is not the epigraph of just the Jew narrations. For instance, a pronouncement on February, 20th, 2002, National Day of Solidarity with the Arab, Muslim and South Asian immigrants*(1), caught my attention because it concerns us. This is how it goes:

“We call everybody to participate in the National Day of Solidarity with the Arab, Muslim and South Asian immigrants. The words of Pastor Niemöller clearly express the challenge that those who look for justice in a better world have. This time they first come for the Arab, Muslim and South Asian immigrants. Just because they belong to certain ethnic groups more than 1,500 people have been arrested and the government doesn’t want to divulge their identities, where they are or under what charges they are accused. A Pakistani man has already died in prison. Who will be next? The recent “disappearances”, the indefinite arrests, the raids, the secret military courts, the absence of legal representation, the evidence that is never shown to the defendant, the lack of an impartial trial for the Arab, Muslim and South Asian immigrants among others, have chilling similarities with the techniques of a police state. We won’t allow that our pain over the 9/11 tragedy is used to justify this new type of repression. It is clear that to be an immigrant is not to be a criminal. The Arab, Muslim and South Asian immigrants aren’t terrorists.

120,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese immigrants were put in concentration camps during World War II. Just after 50 years, the government acknowledged such injustice. Let’s work together to have a hospitable community for immigrants and refugees by holding out and stopping these new injustices! Human life is more important than some unjust laws. Let’s unite with people from the United States to celebrate the National Day of Solidarity. February 20th, 2002 let’s be supportive with the Arab, Muslim and South Asian immigrants. The voice and action from the people are the only things that can STOP these attacks and ensure freedom and justice for all.

On February, 20th, 2002, let’s all wear a blue triangle with the name of one of the recent “missing” person’s name. In 1940, the Nazis wore triangles of different colors to categorize and divide the people in the concentration camps. We won’t allow this type of classification now. We will wear a blue triangle with a positive attitude: to show our support with today’s victims.

Chose a way to express your support: churches, synagogues, syndicates, and the schools can give refuge to the pursued. Organize vigils or a protest at the detention center of the immigration police; organize a conference at your school, college or university; call your representatives and demand that these atrocities stop; organize a session of poetry or music slam; write a letter to the newspaper demanding justice for all; the students must demand to their schools, colleges and universities don’t hand over the immigrant student’s files to the government. Contact your TV stations and the talk shows and ask to be a part of their programs. Organize an educational and cultural event “Get to know the immigrant”, so they can tell their stories.

Remember the tragedy of the Nazi Germany, where many pretended not to see when their neighbors disappeared, were pursued and were stripped of their civil rights. What would you have done then? What will you do now?”

Pynchas Brener *2, the respected rabbi living in our country Venezuela, in a 1992 article mentions the ill-fated day of November 9th, 1938, in Germany, the day of the massacre of the Jews, called “Kristalnacht”, the night of the breaking of the glass. And he says: “From the long and winding night till the morning, it crumbled the innocent, up to that moment, appreciation of hundreds of thousands of Jews who considered Germany to be their fatherland. From a population of approximately 600,000, some 300,000 Jews still resided in Germany, having completely identified with its music and literature. They listened to Beethoven and quoted Goethe, but they were awakened to the harsh reality that were the Nazi mobs who could act, hurt and kill without the smallest protest from the citizens and with the complicity of many. There were individuals who showed incredible courage, but no organized church group raised its voice in protest. Six months later after Kristalnacht, the Catholic Church asked for a divine blessing for Hitler in the masses that took place to celebrate his fiftieth birthday…”

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Jews- Communists

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The following text also caught my attention:
“The assassination of the third Secretary of the Embassy of Germany in Paris was the excuse given. By the end of October of 1938, all the Polish Jews living in Germany and Austria had been arrested and deported with just a few hours of notice. In some areas, only the men were deported and in others, entire families were sent back to their country of origin. A young Jew in Paris, after having heard that his parents had been deported, in an attack of rage and madness, went to the Germany Embassy with a gun in his hand. When he wasn’t allowed to see the Ambassador, he got inside the office and shot a secretary. This secretary died on November 8th. The next day, Kristalnacht started.

Then he tells us that, “coincidentally, at the same time, panic spread on the streets of New York and New Jersey. These weren’t demonstrations in support with the Jews in Germany and Austria. The people’s anxieties were over a radio transmission broadcasted by Orson Welles. The people were under the impression that a “Martian invasion” had begun. In the northwest coast of the US a collective hysteria was the result of a radio broadcast based on science fiction. Meanwhile, in Europe, the collective hysteria was caused by a tangible threat, that would gain strength until it became the worst nightmare of misfortunes and cruel assassinations in the history of mankind. In the United States they feared the extraterrestrials. In Europe, they feared the terrestrials. And between those two, we, the terrestrials, are by far, more cruel.

Statistically speaking, ninety-one coreligionists were killed on that night. One thousand one hundred synagogues were burnt down; seven thousand five hundred commercial establishments that belonged to Jews were stoned, breaking its windows and stores. Thousands of homes were rifled and burnt down. Jewish cemeteries were desecrated and Jewish hospitals were torn down. Research shows that the human mind can’t take in the meaning of the bigger numbers of these statistics. Can you add up the suffering of six million human beings? Is there are greater pain than that caused by the loss of just someone dear to us? Is the mourning greater when two people die? Can just one heart bear the pain caused by the death of one hundred human beings? The human experiences, although in a limited way, will probably leave an indelible print.”

And the version given by the rabbi Pynchas Brener ends with the words of Pastor Niemöller:

“First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me”.

Baruj Tenembaum *3, Founder of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, says that “Martin Niemöller is, perhaps, the emblematic figure of the German resistance to the Third Reich. He was born in Lippstadt, Westphalia January 14th, 1892. He was the lieutenant of a submarine during World War I and for his services he received the badge “Pour la Merité”. He also says that, at the beginning, Niemöller believed that “Hitler embodied the rebirth of the German nationalism, mythology devalued by the defeat and the Versailles agreements… Niemöller shared with the Nazi regimen the disdain for the communists and for the Republic of Weimar. He said [Weimar] had given Germany fourteen years of darkness”.

But then comes what Baruj Tenembaum calls the Disenchantment and Disobedience: “Very soon, notwithstanding, at the beginning of 1934, the illusion of Niemöller vanished when Hitler subordinated the German Evangelical Church with the cooperation of Ludwig Müller, bishop of the Reich. Some kind of neo-paganism was established. The Old Testament was left behind. All the pastors were forced to swear loyalty to the Reich under the slogan ‘One country, one Reich, one Faith’. Those who opposed to the outrage were arrested and many died in the gas chambers. ‘The National Socialism and the Christianity are irreconcilable’ kept on saying Martin Bormann, Hitler’s shadow.

With the intention of preserving the independence of the Lutheran Church from the advances of the totalitarian power, Niemöller founded in 1934 the Emergency Pastoral League (Pfarrernotbund) and assumed the direction of the Confessional Church (Bekennende Kirche), an opposition movement that clearly differentiated from Christians who supported Nazism. Within the general Sinod of May 1934, the Confessional Church declared itself as the legitimate representative of Protestantism in Germany and attracted more than seven thousand pastors. Being aware of the plans that the authority had for him, Niemöller said in one of his last sermons in the Reich:

‘We must use our powers to free from the oppressive hand of the authority like the Apostholes of old did. We are not willing to remain silent by decision of man when God commands us to speak.’
Hitler, furious by the attitude of open uprising of the once praised pastor, ordered his arrest on July 1st 1937. Tried in March 1938, Niemöller was found guilty of subversive actions against the State and was condemned to seven months of imprisonment and to pay a fine of two thousand Marks.
After doing his term, Niemöller continued practicing his tenacious disobedience and was arrested again. This time the sentence resulted more severe and he had to spend seven years at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp under the legal figure of ‘protective custody’ and, on Hitler’s command, as ‘personal prisoner of the Führer’.
The allied troops liberated him in 1945. The same year and during one of his classes, back in the academic life, a student, astonished by Niemöller’s narration about what had happened in Germany, asked him how all of that had been possible. After thinking for a few seconds, he answered him with the famous poem that starts this article.
In the same way, the political analyst Eduardo Madrid *4, living in Chicago, on his letter to the National Guard Colonel, Jesús Faría Rodríguez, who is a prisoner at the Venezuelan jail of Ramo Verde, published by the newspaper 2001 and published in English by some newspapers and websites, ends his moving letter with Niemöller’s words. He emphasizes in its final paragraphs:
“Allow me to make a comparison: the talented marshal Erwin Rommel, who began fooled by Nazism and Hitler, with time, when the truth was clear, associated with the conspirators, as did the colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg, who eventually tried to kill Hitler. Rommel criticized this tactic because he preferred to arrest Hitler and put him on trial. Anyway, when the conspiracy failed and Hitler got to know about Rommel’s implication, he basically gave him two choices: to poison himself or trial for treason with assured sentence of execution. Please, don’t even think that I am insinuating that you are an exposed conspirator. Nor by any means a repentant Chavez’ supporter. What I am trying to say is that to belong to the Armed Forces of a tyranny is very complicated: Rommel, commander of the German troops that had to repel the invasion of Normandy felt ill about his duty to issue orders to young Germans by the thousands to innolate just to defend a preposterous regime. What if you were ordered to participate in a massacre? It isn’t clear, for instance, what to do if one is ordered to violently suppress a pacific demonstration, to disobey and to give yourself away as an officer “not committed to the revolution” (in reality is better to say “not corrupted by the robolution [theft-olution]”) so that the institutional faction has fewer military men, less command and fewer weapons; or perhaps to duck the issue as General Rosendo seems to have done, to spare yourself so that in the moment of truth an instituionalist could become a determining factor to prevent a worse massacre than what happened in April of 2002?

Isn’t it a soldier’s duty to enforce the article 350 of the constitution for obvious reasons? Well, his mission now as a soldier isn’t to deal with those dilemmas. His mission is to fight the battle of the accusation that we all know that is unfounded and to fix it so that the accusation causes you the least possible damage. Meanwhile, being a victim of the state’s terrorism at least elevates you to historical heights, at the same level of all the conscience prisoners that ever existed, prisoners with strength of character, courage, honor and dignity. Since the current regime is so cowardly and incompetent, I think it won’t dare to humiliate you more than what it already has, to avoid the repercussions that it would bring. I think you will have to bear the sorrows for just a little while longer. The predators that make up this “democratic” regime don’t have the courage or the ability needed to survive for long at the top. If it is of any use to you, for people like me, it’s an honor to count you as a family friend and I think you are doing one of the few things an honorable soldier can do under these circumstances: to bear the downpour of insults and accusations because you didn’t sell out.

And don’t worry, the National Guard’s Honor, which should be its insignia, today is nowhere to be seen but lots of people, including me, we all find it in you. Sincerely, Eduardo Madrid. And he quotes:

“First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me”.

To these versions filled with coincidences when they refer to Pastor Niemöller each person can give it their own interpretation. This is a historical message that definitely doesn’t need more explanations. If we look into our immediate context, the Venezuelan case, in the majority of Venezuelans an internal commotion can be appreciated and this is what is really bringing us together. I have felt it in numerous Christmas greetings and e-mails that I have received and for which I feel very grateful. It isn’t a matter of partisanship or preferences, or leaders to follow. It’s about the disposition to let that feeling take over the future with the needed strength. And we’ll only be whole as long as we don’t remain indifferent. Simon Bolivar said it well with some Christian words: “To get this Republic out of this chaos, all of our moral faculties won’t be enough if we don’t join the whole of the people in a unity, the composition of a government as a whole, the legislation as a whole, and the national spirit as a whole. Unity, unity, unity. That must be our flag.” That unity should be joined by the courage in the presence of any injustice to prevent us from being an accomplice. And omission or silence is just for the coward people.

From a personal point of view, I will always remember the clamor of Pastor Niemöller. This is what I wanted to share with all of you by extending my best wishes for the year 2005 to my whole family and all of my friends in the world. Let’s keep hoping!

Martha Colmenares
Caracas Thursday, December 30/2004

Citas a continuación:
*1.- La Neta del Obrero Revolucionario en:rwor.org
Box 3486, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654

*2.- http://www.editorialboker.com/articulo.aspx?id=330

*3.- http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/espanol/opinionbarucht3.htm

*4.- http://www.2001.com.ve/20040626/Opinión/Opinión3.asp?tp=6
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=21784